DIY electronics flourish in the same town as Apple’s factories

A man in China manufactures microcontrollers so he can sell his own electronics.

Shenzhen, China is home to some of the most controversial electronics factories in recent memory, but it also plays host to a robust culture of small, nimble, sometimes single-man electronics manufacturing operations. At Hoektronics, founder of MakerBot Industries Zach Hoeken got a look at one of the machines that a Shenzhen maker uses to produce small batches of circuit boards to make his own electronics to sell at market.

The circuit board maker, Mr. Chen, uses a $4,000 SMT pick-and-place machine in his home for manufacturing. Pick-and-place machines use robotic arms to apply the capacitors, integrated circuits, and resistors to printed circuit boards according to instructions.

According to Hoektronics, Mr. Chen first applies solder, runs the boards through the pick-and-place machine, and then sets the arrangement by putting the boards in an oven. Mr. Chen then hand-solders the connectors to the boards.

The boards shown in the video are AVR ICE programmers. AVR is a type of microcontroller, while ICE stands for “in-circuit emulator,” a debugging tool that monitors everything that happens in the CPU and is used in embedded systems like MP3 players or smartphones.

The programmers are used in electronics that Mr. Chen designs and manufactures himself. He then sells his products at Shenzhen’s multi-floor Huaqiangbei market, a popular venue for peddling gadgets, including knockoffs of Apple products like the iPhone and iPad. Mr. Chen did not specify exactly what type of products he would use the AVR ICE programmers for; in the background of one photo, though, we see a suspiciously familiar logo.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

That's a rather large Apple logo on a table it looks like. I'm not really sure this suggests much of anything. There were a number of vendors in Akihabara last time I was there selling Apple logo'd products that were not knock offs but things like "toasters" that were brushed metal and sported an Apple logo - there were careful not to say Apple (or 林檎 or one of the 74 other ways of writing Apple - no clue what's official since they just use the Logo and Apple in English.)

If the guy was using it to make things for his personal use? Sure. Making (illegal?) knock-offs to sell? Not so much.

(Edit) - It is interesting and I'm glad to have read the article - just wanted to nitpick about the title.

Historically, the difference between the two is very fluid. DIY electronics translates quite smoothly into business ventures. Small computer and electronic business ventures can run as sidelines/second jobs/hobbies. The difference between the two is far less significant than mere fact that there is widespread small-scale and individual interest/talent in the field.

Am I missing something here? What would be the connection between AVR ICE boards and Apple products?

I would assume iPod RIP offs. I actually have one and it's using an AVR chip and this funky MP3 chip. The interface is a damn good rip off of the iPod Classic interface though as is the physical hardware. It only plays MP3s and oddly cannot read UTF-8 metadata (in a Chinese made rip-off SOLD in Japan - go figure.)

Am I missing something here? What would be the connection between AVR ICE boards and Apple products?

My question exactly. An AVR ICE board would be useful for working on devices with AVR MCUs in them, and I'm unaware of any Apple device ever having one, as a peripheral controller or anything else.

This article brings me back to the days when you'd hear a news announcer directing you to their shiny new website. "Type eich tee tee pee colin slash double-u double-u double-u dot ..."

Edit: Case in point: "A man in China manufactures microcontrollers so he can sell his own electronics." Not based on any evidence in this article, he doesn't. Maybe you were looking for Jeri Ellsworth?

Am I missing something here? What would be the connection between AVR ICE boards and Apple products?

My question exactly. An AVR ICE board would be useful for working on devices with AVR MCUs in them, and I'm unaware of any Apple device ever having one, as a peripheral controller or anything else.

This article brings me back to the days when you'd hear a news announcer directing you to their shiny new website. "Type eich tee tee pee colin slash double-u double-u double-u dot ..."

People still do that on TV sometimes ...

I think the Ars article is what's confused me more than anything. Clearly this guy only makes and sells AVR ICE boards and definitely doesn't sell any Apple rip-offs. The Apple rip-off stuff usually doesn't actually WORK or actually clone the Apple devices, they just superficially look like them. (Which is good enough for many Chinese.)

Good. Someone needs to show that an individual (or a small business?) can make electronics. It isn't just a realm of multinational corps.

If I may say: if you are a computer or IT nerd, you owe it to yourself to learn the basic electronics theory too. It is nice knowing exactly how this stuff works, from the bottom. It doesn't hurt having basic repair skills either. And it's sooo awesome making something on your own and flipping the switch and seeing the thing work correctly the first time.

Good. Someone needs to show that an individual (or a small business?) can make electronics. It isn't just a realm of multinational corps.

If I may say: if you are a computer or IT nerd, you owe it to yourself to learn the basic electronics theory too. It is nice knowing exactly how this stuff works, from the bottom. It doesn't hurt having basic repair skills either. And it's sooo awesome making something on your own and flipping the switch and seeing the thing work correctly the first time.

There are plenty of small fabricators in the U.S. and elsewhere that will take your design files (which, for basic designs, you can create with inexpensive and/or free tools, sometimes provided by the fab house on their website) and, for a fee, will return to you finished printed circuit boards. Some will even do the assembly and test.

In fact, I can't really think of too many scenarios where it makes sense to subject yourself to the costs of buying, maintaining, and housing your own equipment, not to mention dealing with disposing of all the nasty toxic chemicals these processes generate (not a problem in China, unless you like clean drinking water and stuff).

Unless of course, you don't want any outside parties looking too closely at all those logos you're silk-screening onto your boards that may or may not bear an uncanny resemblance to other well-known logos .

I don't see why the article makes mention of a table with a stone inlay of an apple that's not in the actual shape of the Apple logo even though the _furniture manufacturer_ that made that table probably used an apple inlay to sell better. It's a freaking table. If he had a decorative apple carved out of stone or cast from glass sitting on a nondescript table would that be worth pointing out as well?

There are plenty of small fabricators in the U.S. and elsewhere that will take your design files (which, for basic designs, you can create with inexpensive and/or free tools, sometimes provided by the fab house on their website) and, for a fee, will return to you finished printed circuit boards.

I feel like this article was a missed opportunity. You started to draw me in, and then the article ended abruptly. I was hoping for something deeper.

Absolutely.

Besides clarifying the equipment itself and the low barriers to entry, the pseudo 'open source' nature of electronics designs is ripe for several feature articles. The culture is that designers and manufacturers take existing designs and use them with some greater or lesser degree of modification. In some cases these are reverse engineered from existing products, but more commonly they're some design provided to the contract manufacturer at some point, repurposed. The copying of designs is often illicit and often willing, but is understood, tolerated, and expected.

There are plenty of small fabricators in the U.S. and elsewhere that will take your design files (which, for basic designs, you can create with inexpensive and/or free tools, sometimes provided by the fab house on their website) and, for a fee, will return to you finished printed circuit boards.

Can anyone recommend a shop that does new product design on the cheap end? I've had a couple of ideas for electronic devices I want and I think there is a limited market for, but my EE friend just doesn't have time to help me put together a design. I have an ME friend but his firm builds stuff for NASA so I don't think they'd be interested in my dinky projects. So where does a guy with an idea go to find out what it would take to make it real? Thanks guys

Can anyone recommend a shop that does new product design on the cheap end?

If your plan is to get someone to design a commercial product for you, I don't think you'll like what constitutes "cheap". In any event, you might do better to try a forum where more people are doing these things, like AVR Freaks, Microchip, Adafruit or Dangerous Prototypes, among other possibilities. Read around a bit before posting in one of those forums, they're all quite different animals.

This surely is a weird article. Reads like two strangers with absolutely nothing in common are waiting at a bus stop and are desperately trying to start a conversation.It can easily turn into an article "How come the Arduino modules that SparkFun sells for $16, can be bought for $2 (with free shipping) on E-bay?" But that would probably be interesting for no more than 20 Ars readers.

Just a quick note. The apple logo on that table looks more like a recycled/reused sales counter. This happens *all* the time. Someone (whether Apple, a real retailer or a faker) makes a counter to sell devices on, then later, it gets old and beat up. Then, it gets dragged back to somewhere as a work bench.

I also have to agree that the headline is a Straw Man, red herring, Troll Bait. *Tons* of things are made and sold in the Shenzhen area. So what that some of them are Apple? Also, Foxconn has been opening factories elsewhere and moving operations around. Maybe its just to keep the headline writers on their toes.

As an Electrical Engineer this article was painful to read.At first I thought somebody in Shenzen was making her own microcontroller using a cheap chinese foundry, but instead is a guy assembling (possibly reversed engineered, something I'm perfectly OK with) AVR (of arduino fame) programmers/debuggers, something that hobbyists all over the world do without making a fuss.Next time, please do a 1 minute research on wikipedia before posting something irrelevant only to cover the daily quota of iThings articles.